Rush loves Chris, but John's not so hot about Joan

Rush Limbaugh famously said that if he could love a man, that man would be Chris Christie.

Well if Chris Christie's nominee to the state Civil Rights Commission got her way, Rush could not only fall in love with Christie; he could marry him. The link to the above clip was sent to me by conservative activist John Tomicki. Like many other conservatives around the state, Tomicki is appalled at the left-wing nature of Christie's appointments, starting with liberal Democrat Paula Dow as attorney general.

Now the Guv's pushing another liberal into a position where a conservative could make a real difference. Joan Rivitz's biography on the state website says she's "an educational consultant in private practice and specializes in matters of bias and prejudice."

Sounds to me like she's a lifetime worker in the victimhood industry, exactly the opposite of the type of person a conservative would want on the commission. A conservative on the commission would no doubt work to keep it from issuing news releases like this:

TRENTON – Division on Civil Rights Director Chinh Q. Le announced today that a record 86 percent of multiple-dwelling rental property owners who are required to do so have submitted, on time, an annual report to the Division describing the race and ethnicity of their housing applicants and leaseholders.

Is it Chris Christie's view that landlords should be forced to ask their tenants their ethnicity and then file paperwork with the state detailing it? Evidently so.

Or how about this letter the commission sends out warning property owners they have to rent to illegal aliens? The letter bans landlords from making:

The selective inquiry about, or request for information and/or documentation of, a prospective tenant’s or buyer’s immigration status, based on the person’s national origin, race, or any other protected status.

By the way, that letter also tells property owners they can't ask about a prospective tenant's minimum income. This is exactly the sort of thing that conservatives go crazy about. If Steve Lonegan had been elected governor, he would have defunded that commission and hundreds of other similar bodies within state government. We can't afford this sort of liberal extravagance any more. Yet the state's operating budget actually grew under Christie because he broke his promise to cut state government.

We saw the same thing under Christie Whitman, by the way. She would fool credulous conservatives like George Will into believing she was some sort of new Republican who could offer a formula for winning in the Northeast. And it turned out that formula was to move just as far left as her predecessor when it came to key policy appointments.

With Christie, he has indeed offered some good reforms. But getting them past the state Legislature is quite another thing. Meanwhile the real policy that affects New Jerseyans is put together by these hundreds of panels and commissions. And they remain as liberal under Christie as they were under Corzine. If you doubt that, just peruse the commission's website.

As for Limbaugh, he is as ignorant of conservatism in Jersey as he is nationally. In the clip below, note the part at the beginning where Limbaugh gives Christie credit for balancing the state budget by confiscating local surpluses.

When Jim McGreevey did that, conservatives let him have it. We conservatives believe local money should stay local. Christie quite obviously doesn't. He took more tax money away from the suburbs than any Democrat ever dared.

And the Rivitz appointment shows that his stand against same-sex marriage was just campaign rhetoric. If Christie truly opposed same-sex marriage, he would not be appointing an advocate to a key position in his administration.

But don't tell Rush. Being in love means never having to say you're sorry.